Background
Hans Berger was born on May 21, 1873, in Neuses (now part of Coburg), Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, German Empire (present-day Germany), the son of Paul Friedrich Berger and of Anna Rückert.
Hans Berger (1873 - 1941), inventor of the electroencephalogram (EEG) and Rector of Friedrich Schiller University of Jena (1927 - 1938)
Jena, Thuringia, Germany
University of Jena
Jena, Thuringia, Germany
University of Jena
Jena, Thuringia, Germany
University of Jena
Coburg, Bavaria, Germany
Coburg Gymnasium
Jena, Thuringia, Germany
University of Jena
An early EEG recording done by Hans Berger
Alter Johannisfriedhof, Jena, Thuringia, Germany
The grave of Hans Berger
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0444407391/?tag=2022091-20
1969
inventor neurologist psychiatrist scientist
Hans Berger was born on May 21, 1873, in Neuses (now part of Coburg), Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, German Empire (present-day Germany), the son of Paul Friedrich Berger and of Anna Rückert.
Berger graduated from the Gymnasium at Coburg and then entered the University of Jena in 1892 with a view to becoming an astronomer. After one semester, he abandoned his studies and enlisted for a year of service in the cavalry.
On completion of his military service, Berger returned to Jena to study medicine with the goal of discovering the physiological basis of "psychic energy". He obtained his medical degree from Jena in 1897.
In 1897, Berger was appointed a staff member of the University of Jena Psychiatric Clinic, directed by Otto Binswanger. Berger was appointed Privatdozent (unsalaried university lecturer) in 1901.
Berger initially recorded pulsations of the human brain through skull detects. Berger's study of cerebral blood flow, published in On the Bodily Expressions of Psychical States (1904 - 1907), did not confirm his theory of mind-brain interactions.
From 1902 to 1910, Berger recorded electrical activity from cerebral cortex of animals. During World War I, Berger served as an army neuropsychiatrist.
After Binswanger abruptly resigned as director of the Psychiatric University Clinic, Jena, university authorities appointed Berger to the chair of psychiatry in 1920. That year, Berger began recording "fluctuations in electrical current from the surface of the cerebral cortex" in both dogs and humans. In 1924, Berger recorded electrical activity with a string galvanometer from the exposed cerebral cortex of a patient undergoing brain tumor surgery. During the 5 years between this first recording of the electrical activity from human brain, Berger improved techniques of recording EEG by inserting low resistance silver chloride-coated needles into subiects’ scalps. Berger published his first descriptions of human electroencephalograms in Über das Elektrenkephalogramm des Menschen in 1929.
Berger stated that EEG waves were composed of two fundamental waveforms: larger amplitude 8 - 11 Hz alpha waves that he related to mental activity and smaller amplitude, 15 - 30 Hz beta waves he associated with the metabolic activity of cortical tissue. He discovered that alpha waves disappeared and beta waves emerged when normal subjects opened their eyes or responded to alerting sensory stimuli. Berger documented that the alpha rhythm slowed from normal frequencies of 8 - 12 Hz in the presence of tumors, encephalitis, intracranial hemorrhages, brain tumors, abscesses, and cerebral contusions. Berger also reported sharply contoured spike and slow complex waves during epileptic seizures. He postulated that the EEG represented the "physical concomitants of conscious phenomena" and that the thalamus excited the cortex to produce alpha waves. Berger’s discoveries did not gain full acceptance until Nobel Prize-winner Sir Edgar Adrian confirmed Berger’s discoveries in 1934.
On September 30, 1938, while making rounds, Berger was called through the telephone by a Nazi officer who ordered him to retire the following day. His laboratory was immediately dismantled. Deprived of the opportunity to pursue scientific research and dismayed that his country launched war on its neighbors, Hans Berger became depressed and committed suicide on June 1, 1941, in Jena, Germany.
Hans Berger is remembered as a physicist, scientist, and inventor, who proved the existence of electric voltage fluctuations in the human brain, and used an amplifying machine (an electroencephalograph) to record the first human electroencephalogram (EEG), measuring tiny changes in electrical flow between a pair of electrodes placed on a patient's skull.
Berger also invented the electroencephalogram (giving the device its name), and he was the discoverer of the alpha wave rhythm known as "Berger's wave".
Hans-Berger-Preis is awarded triennially by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Klinische Neurophysiologie (German Society of Clinical Neurophysiology) for long-standing, extensive academic work in theoretical or clinical neurophysiology.
Though not Jewish, Hans Berger made no secret of his disdain for the growing Nazi movement in Germany, and for this, he was stripped of his academic post in 1938.
Hans Berger proved the existence of electric voltage fluctuations in the human brain, and used an amplifying machine (an electroencephalograph) to record the first human electroencephalogram (EEG), measuring tiny changes in electrical flow between a pair of electrodes placed on a patient's skull. EEGs are now used to diagnose serious head injuries, brain tumors, epilepsy, and degenerative diseases of the nervous system.
Prior to his EEG work, Berger had spent several years unsuccessfully seeking to correlate such factors as blood circulation and temperature with brain function. He later showed EEG variations between normal and brain-injured patients, and between patients with their eyes open and eyes closed. Berger conducted his early brain research in complete secrecy, and did not publish his until 1929, five years after his first EEG on July 6, 1924.
Quotations:
"The electroencephalogram represents a continuous curve with continuous oscillations in which... one can distinguish larger first order waves with an average duration of 90 milliseconds and smaller second order waves of an average duration of 35 milliseconds."
"We see in the electroencephalogram a concomitant phenomenon of the continuous nerve processes which take place in the brain, exactly as the electrocardiogram represents a concomitant phenomenon of the contractions of the individual segments of the heart."
His associates described Hans Berger as punctual, strict, demanding, and reserved.
In 1911, Hans Berger married Baroness Ursula von Bülow. They had three daughters, and one son.
Otto Ludwig Binswanger was a Swiss psychiatrist and neurologist, who came from a famous family of physicians.
